An estimated 850 million people today lack access to portable drinking water, a crisis responsible for half of all hospitalizations for illness in the developing world. The great majority of this population lives in villages or urban slums, without access to piped household water supply. Today, municipal water utilities are the only water distribution systems that systematically and remotely track water quality and quantity in close to real-time. Extending this kind of “on-grid” infrastructure to reach underserved populations is cost prohibitive. No “off-grid” systems exist that track water filtration and dispensing from the raw water source to the service outlet, and to control their operations. In addition, it is now widely accepted that collecting payment for public water provision is critical for the continued financial viability and quality of the distribution system.
Several attempts have been made to solve these problems. Many central control systems exist which communicate with, monitor and manage a water dispensing system remotely. U.S. Pat. No. 6,753,186 discloses a water quality sampling system and method in which compact water quality detector and monitoring units intended for domestic use are installed that track water provided, which customers pay using the internet. The system is capable of analyzing the related data for determining the condition and extent of impurity in the water elements. However, the disclosure includes nothing on remote management of the system or quality control parameters that automatically shut down the system and are used to diagnose the “health” of the water dispensing system. Other monitoring and control systems intend to check the working of water dispensing systems but they are not able to control the working of the water dispensing system when the quality standards of water are not met. Finally, few if any existing control systems are designed to manage decentralized, “off grid” water utility infrastructures—the area of greatest need in addressing the water crisis. Reliable utility infrastructure is in development or missing in majority of emerging markets or rural areas.
There is, therefore, a requirement to develop a control system, which will communicate with the water dispensing system enabling remote tracking and management of distribution services, which will ensure quality control within a set of fixed parameters, which will automatically diagnose machine health issues, and which will operate in a decentralized and modular manner. Furthermore, there is a requirement to develop a control system which will be able to manage payment collection on service usage and will ensure consistent service and provide information as to where the services are being distributed.